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Apologizing For Our Past Sins May Reveal Character And For A Time Lessen Anti-americanism Abroad, But If It Is Done Without Acknowledging That The Sins Of America Are The Sins Of Mankind, And That Our Remedies Are So Often Exceptional, Then It Only Earns Transitory Applause—and A More Lasting Contempt That We Ourselves Do Not Believe In The Values We Profess.

-Victor Davis Hanson

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Apologizing For Our Past

Victor Davis Hanson

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Apologizing For Our Past Sins May Reveal Character And For A Time Lessen Anti-americanism Abroad, But If It Is Done Without Acknowledging That The Sins Of America Are The Sins Of Mankind, And That Our Remedies Are So Often Exceptional, Then It Only Earns Transitory Applause—and A More Lasting Contempt That We Ourselves Do Not Believe In The Values We Profess.

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Unhappy Voters Thought The Anemic Economy, Obamacare, The Collapse Of U.s. Foreign Policy, The Scandals In Government, And The Incompetent Handling Of Everything From The Islamic State To Ebola Were The Only Real Issues. Democrats' Refusal To Acknowledge Them Did Not Make These Failures Go Away.

Most Authoritarians Do Not Surrender Power Voluntarily.

Did Either The Nonexistent Or The Measured Response After A Series Of Attacks On Americans The Past Decade - In Lebanon, Africa, Saudi Arabia, New York, And Yemen - Suggest To Our Terrorist Enemies That It Was Wrong And Unwise To Kill Reasonable And Affable People, Or Did The Easy Killing Imply That Self-absorbed And Pampered Lotus-eaters Would Not Much Care Who Or How Many Were Butchered As Long As It Was Within Reasonable Numbers And Spread Out Over Time?

History Has Shown That A Government's Redistribution Of Shrinking Wealth, In Preference To A Private Sector's Creation Of New Sources Of It, Can Prove More Destructive Than Even The Most Deadly Enemy.

What Is About Palin That Drives The Elite, Especially Elite Women, Crazy? Great Looks? That Middle-america Accent? The 5 Kids And He-man Husband? The Lack Of A Powerful Father Or Spouse Who Could Jump-start Her 'feminist' Career With Money, Contacts, And Influence? That Idaho Ba? The Wink? The Charisma And, Indeed, Sensuality So Lacking In Her Angry Critics?

Stop Seeing Socialists And Anti-americans As Democrats. When A Michael Moore Compares Beheaders To Our Own Minutemen And Laments That Too Many Democrats Were In The World Trade Center, He Deserves No Platform Alongside Wesley Clark Or A Seat Next To Jimmy Carter Or Praise For His Pseudo-dramas From High Democrats.

This Is Something That Donald Trump Has Been Very Effective At Exploiting Because Throughout Our History, One Of The Things That Was Important To Galvanize The Country Against A Perceived Threat Has Been Philology.

The Problem With Deterrence - Apparently Sometimes Forgotten By Our Former Presidents - Is That It Is Not Static, But A Creature Of The Moment, Captive To Impression, And Nursed On Action, Not Talk. It Must Be Maintained Hourly And Can Erode Or Be Lost With A Single Act Of Failed Nerve, Despite All The Braggadocio Of Threatened Measures. And, Once Gone, The Remedies Needed For Its Restoration Are Always More Expensive, Deadly - And Controversial - Than Would Have Been Its Simple Maintenance.

I Think The Democrat Party Is Taking Its Cue From The Media. When The Media Has A Narrative, Whether It's The Use Of Profanity, The Democratic Party Follows It.

The Fact Is, Beneath The Hype, Iraqis Will Soon Appreciate American Help And Idealism Far More Than French Perfidy. It Is Never Wrong To Be On The Side Of Freedom - Never.

I Think People Are Beating Each Other Up In The Halls Of Congress, As They Did In The Late 1850s.

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Obama's Immigration Legacy Will Be The Juxtaposition Of His Serial Insistence That He Was Not A King Or An Emperor, And Could Not Contravene The Constitution By Granting A Blanket Amnesty, With His Efforts To Do Just That When It Was No Longer Politically Inexpedient. I Don't Think A President Has Ever Quite So Habitually Warned The Country Of The Dangers That Would Soon Emanate From Himself.

Ignorance And Arrogance Are A Lethal Combination. Nowhere Do We See That More Clearly Among Writers And Performers Who Pontificate As Historians When They Know Nothing About History.

I Think Everybody Realizes Some Things Went Wrong In The Middle East And That Most Of The Terrorism Is Emanating From That Area.

Nor Did Americans Believe That Republicans Had Been Waging War On Minorities, Women, Or Gays - Especially Given That Republicans Have Held The House Only Since 2011 And Have Been Out Of Power In The Senate And Presidency Since 2009.

It's Very Difficult, Historically, To Define What An Elite Is. But Whatever It Is, People Are Very Angry At That Idea, I Think, Not So Much Because Of Wealth Or Privilege As Much As Attitude That The Populous Masses, If I Could Use That Overused Term, Feel That A Particular Government Or Cultural Group Is Not Subject To The Ramifications Of Their Own Ideology.

Behind Every American Soldier, Dozens Of Their Countrymen Tonight Sleep Soundly — And Hundreds More In Their Shadow Abroad Will Wake Up Alive And Safe.

Politicians In Their Hubris Who Believe They Can Ignore Debt Or Wish It Away Are Sorely Disappointed - As We See Now With The Plummeting Approval Ratings Of Both The Administration And Congress.

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Behind Every Liberal Philanthropist Fortune Is A Huge Capitalist Score. Bill Gates And Warren Buffett Can Afford Now To Be Liberal - An Expensive Indulgence - Because In Their Early Incarnations They Were No-holds-barred Capitalists Who Made Lots Of Enemies Conducting Business Without Mercy And In Search Of Pure Profit.

Victory May Now Require A Level Of Force Deemed Objectionable By Civilized Peoples, Meaning That Some, For Justifiable Reasons, May Be Reluctant To Pursue It. But Victory Has Not Become An Ossified Concept Altogether.

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The Shutdown May Have Temporarily Sidetracked The Republicans, Yet Obamacare Threatens Much Worse For The Democrats. By 2014 The Former Will Be Ancient History, While The Latter Will Be An Ongoing Mess.

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Intellectual Arrogance

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Taking On All At Once Germany, Japan, And Italy - Diverse Enemies All - Did Not Require The Weeding Out Of All The Fascists And Their Supporters In Mexico, Argentina, Eastern Europe, And The Arab World. Instead, Those In Jackboots And Armbands Worldwide Quietly Stowed All Their Emblems Away As Organized Fascism Died On The Vine Once The Roots Were Torn Out In Berlin, Rome, And Tokyo. So Too Will The Terrorists, Once Their Sanctuaries And Capital Shrivel Up - As Is Happening As We Speak.

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A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, Or Al Gore Looks - No, Acts - Like He Either Came Out Of A Hairstylist's Salon Or Got Off A Gulfstream.

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There's Just No - Nothing Like This Country, Which Is The Only, Really, Multiracial Country That's Tried To Share In A Common Culture In The History Of Civilization That's Pulled It Off. A Lot Of The Times, We Want Perfection. If We're Not Perfect, We're Not Good.

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Of Course, The Clintons Are Not Only Corrupt But Cynical As Well. They Accept That The Progressive Media, The Foundations, The Universities, The Bureaucracies, Hollywood, And Silicon Valley Honor Power More Than Trendy Left-wing Politics; They Well Understand That Their Fans Will, For Them, Make The Necessary Adjustments To Contextualize Clinton Criminality Or Amorality.

I Think There's A Group Of Students - Whether It's The Micro-aggression Or The Safe Space Or The Trigger Warning That Garner A Lot Of Attention - But That The Fundamental Issues That They're More Interested In Are - And I'll Be Very Frank Here - How Much Money Do I Pay For A Unit? And What Is That Unit Going To Do For Me When I'm Graduating?and Even Though This Is Mostly In A Progressive Landscape, They're Asking Questions That Have Not Been Asked Of The University. And The University Can't Supply Answers To Them.

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I Saw More Stupid People In Graduate School And Three Decades In Academia Than I Ever Did Who Ran 100 Acres Without Going Broke.

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A Country That Cannot Count Its Own Illegal Aliens - Estimates Range From 8-12 Million - With A Porous 2,000 Mile Border Is Not Secure Despite Twelve Carrier Battle Groups. We Must Accept That It Is A Cornerstone Of Mexican Foreign Policy To Export Illegally Each Year A Million Of Its Own To The United States To Avoid Needed Reform At Home And To Influence American Domestic Policy.

States Are Like People. They Do Not Question The Awful Status Quo Until Some Dramatic Event Overturns The Conventional And Lax Way Of Thinking.

War Seems To Come Out Of Nowhere, Like Rust That Suddenly Pops Up On Iron After A Storm.

I See A Continuation Of The Populist Outrage That Prompted The Brexit And Sparked The Bernie Sanders Campaign.

Illegal Immigration Is Praised Only By Those Who Benefit Directly From It, Whether In The Familial Sense Of Inexpensive Nannies, Cooks, Or Gardeners; Or In The Corporate Interest Of Cheap Labor In The Hospitality Industries, Agriculture, And Construction; Or In The Political Sense Of New Liberal Constituents; Or In The Tribal Sense Of Expanding The So-called La Raza Base. But The Vast Majority Of Americans Accept That When Federal Law Is Ignored, Chaos Ensues.

The American People Are Not Naifs Who Yearn For Isolationism, But They Are Starting To Ask Some Hard Questions About The Way We Have Been Doing Business For 50 Years, And It May Well Be Time To Grant The French, Canadians, Germans, Turks, South Koreans, And A Host Of Others Their Wishes For Independence From Us: Polite Friendship - But No Alliances, No Bases, No Money, No Trade Concessions, And No More Begging For The Privilege Of Protecting Them.

Gas Prices In Many Parts Of The Country Are Nearing $4 A Gallon; It Could Get Even Worse As Unrest Spreads Throughout The Oil-exporting Middle East. Yet The Obama Administration Once Again Seems To See No Crisis. It Has Curtailed New Leases For Offshore Oil Exploration For Seven Years And Exempted Thousands Of Acres In The West From New Drilling. It Will Not Reconsider Opening Up Small Areas Of Alaska With Known Large Oil Reserves.

Offering 'comprehensive' Reform Usually Means Years Of Arguing And Horse-trading Among Pressure Groups To Get Anything Done. By The Time All The Special Interests Are Appeased Or Bought Off, The Resulting Elephantine Legislation Typically Looks Nothing Like What Was Intended. In Short, Big-government Medicine Usually Doesn't Work On Big-government Sickness. If President Obama Wants 'comprehensive' Change, It Would Be Better Simply Not To Spend Any More Money We Don't Have.

If The Democrats Feel They Have Lost The Public's Confidence In Their Stewardship Of National Security, Then The Threat Of Iran Offers A Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Or John Kerry An Opportunity To Get Out Front Now And Pledge Support For A United Effort - Attacking Bush From The Right About Too Tepid A Stance Rather From The Predictable Left That We Are 'hegemonic' And 'imperialistic' Every Time We Use Force Abroad.

So Why, After Prior Successes, Did Obama's Race/class/gender Attack Finally Sputter Out Like The French At Waterloo?

Any Time The Western Way Of War Can Be Unleashed On An Enemy Stupid Enough To Enter Its Arena, Victory Is Assured.

Can-do Americans Courageously Go About Their Duty In Iraq - Mostly Unafraid That A Culture Of 2,000 Years, The Reality Of Geography, The Sheer Forces Of Language And Religion, The Propaganda Of State-run Arab Media And The Cynicism Of The Liberal West Are All Stacked Against Them.

The President Who Is Most Slandered As Hitler Will Probably Prove To Be The Most Zealous Advocate Of Democratic Government Abroad, The Staunchest Friend Of Beleaguered Israel, And The Greatest Promoter Of Global Individual Freedom In Our Recent Memory.

If I Talk To Rural People Where I Live - Mostly Hispanic But Also Poor White - They're Not Sympathetic To The Black Lives Matter Movement.

Cheap Anti-americanism Will Eventually Have Consequences.

Donald Trump, He Didn't Dismantle Eastern European Missile Defense. He Didn't Go To Geneva And Press A Plastic Red Button. He Didn't Make Fun Of Romney For Saying Russia Was An Existential Enemy. He Didn't Have A Hot Mic Exchange With A Russian President Saying That He Would Be More Flexible With The Russians After The Elections.

We're In A Very Orwellian Situation Where When We - We've Slashed Defense. And We've Raised Taxes. And We Consider $600 Billion Annual Deficit Success Because It's Not $1 Trillion.

Even In Its Third Century, America Is Still The Most Meritocratic Nation In The World.

The Fact Is That We Have Been Consistent In A Predictable 60-year Commitment To National Security, While Our Friends And Former Enemies - By Intent Or Default - Have Followed Different Paths Since 1989. We Stayed Mostly The Same As They Became Hypopowers That, To Take A Small Example, Would And Could Do Nothing Should A Madman In Korea Wish To Kill Millions.

The Wisdom And Spirit Of Churchill Not Only Saved Britain From The Third Reich But Saved Western Civilization From A Nazi Dark Ages When No Other Nation Was Willing To Take Up That Defense. Churchill Was The Greatest Military, Political And Spiritual Leader Of The 20th Century.

Westernization, Coupled With Globalization, Has Created An Affluent And Leisured Elite That Now Gravitates To Universities, The Media, Bureaucracies, And World Organizations, All Places Where Wealth Is Not Created, But Analyzed, Critiqued, And Lavishly Spent.

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